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Two remarkably similar doctoral dissertations



Two remarkably similar doctoral dissertations.

Update: Fox 26 ran this story:

I messaged Ashley Vann, the president of the Katy ISD school board a few days ago and shared this with her, and asked that we meet to discuss this and hopefully find a way to handle this in-house, and keep it out of the press and the public. I gave her 3 days to respond. 4 days have passed, and she has not responded back to me to discuss how we might prevent further damage to the reputation of Katy, and the reputation of University of Houston’s College of Education. I really hoped she had, as this brings me no joy.

In 2008, Keith A. Rowland’s submitted a doctoral dissertation at Liberty University titled: The Relationship of Principal Leadership and Teacher Morale. Click the link to view in full. (You can also view the dissertation from Liberty University’s website here.)

4 years later, in 2012, Lawrence A. Hindt submitted a doctoral dissertation to the University of Houston titled: The Effects of Principal Leadership on Teacher Morale and Student Achievement. Click the link to view in full. (You can also view the dissertation from University of Houston’s website here.)

I am not an expert on plagiarism, and it’s not up to me to make this call, but the similarities concern me, and I believe this is information that the public should be able to weigh in on, even if our school board won’t. U of H has been notified of this, but due to FERPA laws, they can not tell me whether or not they will do anything about it.

It’s not just the exact same lines used between papers that concerns me, it’s the systematic similarity of the format, structure, ideas, thoughts, methods, justifications, conclusions and sources.

Using or copying research data that was the result of a study done by others without citing the source.

Quoting words or ideas from online, electronic or printed resources such as articles or books without acknowledging the author(s).

Copying or purchasing a paper and handing it in as your own work.

Falsely creating a citation that doesn’t exist.

Failing to credit and cite someone else’s thoughts or ideas when paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing in a way that relies too heavily on another’s language or syntax.

Turnitin.com results: A citizen of Katy has access to TurnItIn.com, a popular plagiarism checker (Which I do not have access to), and ran Dr. Hindt’s dissertation through their system. It came back as 32% similar to other sources: Hindt’s Turnitin results

You be the judge:

I’ll show you line by line comparisons directly below, and below that you can find PDFs that represent the similarities we found in only the first few dozen pages. After that, you can see the initial tool used to identify the exact phrases used in both dissertations.

Rowland (2008) The role of the principal in American schools has been in a constant state of change since its emergence. Hindt (2012) Since its inception, the role of the principalship in American schools has been in a constant state of change.

Rowland (2008) the principal is a manager of the building or a leader of the school. Hindt (2012) issue of whether the principal is a building manager or a leader of the school.

Rowland (2008) there has been discrepancy in the expectations of the principal in regard to curriculum and instruction. Hindt (2012) there have been wide variances in the roles of the principal with respect to curricular and instructional expectations.

Rowland (2008) The emergence of the school principal began in the mid-nineteenth century (Rousmaniere, 2007) Hindt (2012) According to Rousmaniere (2007), the position of the school principal emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Rowland (2008) With the formation of graded schools in urban areas, a head teacher emerged in many districts to help guide or lead the other teachers in the school. Hindt (2012) With the creation of graded education programs – particularly in urban areas – many systems created the position of a head teacher in order to provide leadership, guidance, and support to other teachers in the school.

Rowland (2008) As Rousmaniere points out, the lead teacher or principal teacher was the authority in the school, Hindt (2012) The lead teacher, later called the principal teacher, came to serve as the authority figure and the disciplinarian. In addition, his/her responsibilities included

Rowland (2008) organized curriculum, was the disciplinarian, and supervised operations Hindt (2012) the organization of curriculum and supervision of various school operations.

Rowland (2008) With the continuation of urbanization in America, the development of the principal’s position continued thorugh the end of the nineteenth century when most urban schools had a principal. Hindt (2012) Rousmaniere pointed out that as the urbanization in America continued, so did the evolution of the position of school principal. Moreover, by the end of the nineteenth century, most urban schools had a principal at the helm, and the roles of that position were

Rowland (2008) The role was very diverse in that some systems had the principal as primarily a teacher with minor operational duties while others had the principal as simply a clerk with record keeping duties. Hindt (2012) as diverse as the schools in which they were carried out. In some systems the principal was primarily a lead teacher with minor duties pertaining to school operations, while the principal’s role in other systems included a clerical or record keeping capacity.

Rowland (2008) Into the twentieth century, the principal continued the emergence from teacher to administrator with professional requirements and licensing becoming required for the position of principal. Hindt (2012) By the turn of the century, however, the principal’s role had been transformed into one of the school administrators, with prerequisites of the job being professional experience and necessary licensing required for employment.

Rowland (2008) For much of the twentieth century, the role of the principal was that of manager where the principal was expected to uphold district mandates, manage personnel, manage the budget, and handle other operational issues (Usdan, McCloud & Podmostko, 2000). write papers for money (2012) According to Usdan, McCloud, and Podmostko (2000), for much of the next century. “The role of the principal was that of manager who was expected to uphold district mandates, manage personnel, manage the budget, and handle other operational issues.

Rowland (2008) As American education moved into a new era of accountability in the later part of the century, this role necessitated the inclusion of leadership. Hindt (2012) With the movement toward increased accountability in the later part of the twentieth century, the role of the school principal necessitated a transition from manager, to leader

Rowland (2008) As Cawelti (1984) stated: “Continuing research on effective schools has verified the common sense obvservation that schools are rarely effective, in any sense of the word, unless the principal is a “good” leader”. Hindt (2012) Cawelti’s (1984) findings support this transition: “Continuing research on effective schools has verified the common-sense observation that schools are rarely effective, in any sense of the word, unless the principal is a ‘good leader'”

Rowland (2008) Usdan, McCloud, & Podmostko (2000) further develop this role of the principal by stating: “principals today must serve as leaders for student learning” Hindt (2012) Usdan, McCloud, & Podmostko further illustrated findings in support of this change in roles by emphasizing that “principals today must server as leaders for student learning”

Rowland (2008) They list the following items as the requirements for fulfilling this role Hindt (2012) The following is a list of characteristics of principals that they suggest for successful fulfillment of this role:

Rowland (2008)

Knowledge of academic content and pedagogy.

Working with teachers to strengthen skills.

Collect analyze and use data.

Rally all stakeholders to increase student performance.

Possess the leadership skills to fulfill the role.

Hindt (2012)

Has a knowledge of academic content as well as pedagogical knowledge.

Deliberately plans for helping teachers strengthen instructional skills.

Analyzes and uses pertinent data;

Recreuits all stakeholders to aid in the increase of student achievement; and

Posssess strong leadership skills (Usdan, McCloud, & Podmostko).

Here is another way to view. Match up the numbers between the two documents:

Keith Rowland (2008)

Lawrence Hindt (2012)

Here are many other examples we found in just the first few dozen pages. I recommend opening them both in new windows and reading them side by side. Again, follow the numbered sections from each version.

(Update May 3) Here is a comparison of the methodology chapter, under ‘Subjects’.

Before manually reviewing the papers, here is what we initially found using a free tool called Copyleaks.

Even many citations are exactly the same, in the exact same order.

Parents who care about who is directing the education of their children will read the comparison of these two dissertations.

Sean Dolan has gone to a great deal of trouble to find them, read them, and then make it simple for just about anybody to see the apparent similarities and identical passages and bibliographical entries.

I doubt that anyone would claim that one can coincidentally write a dissertation that has the exact same bibliographical entries as those of someone else!

Yes, there are some additional bibliographical entries that are not the same, but they were inserted after the original writer turned in his dissertation in 2008. It’s not hard for someone to list more books in a bibliography.

Those same bibliographical citations that ARE the same also appear in the exact same order in the citations of the two dissertations.

Mr. Dolan has clearly shown how the two dissertations compare. There is no contrast except that the one submitted by the KISD superintendent contains a survey of Ft. Bend ISD students, where he was employed at the time as an assistant superintendent, instead of a Purdue University survey like Mr. Rowland’s. Purdue University student surveys have been widely used and accepted for decades by educational researchers.

Please care enough about your children to read the work that Mr. Dolan has clearly set up so that you may decide for yourself what is the truth. Do not instead rely on the word of someone from Rice University who appears not to have a clue about doctoral dissertations in the field of Education or how they are currently being handed out by certain Texas universities.

In my opinion there is clear evidence presented here that the KISD superintendent has submitted a dissertation to the University of Houston Department of Education that paraphrases one that someone else wrote.

The question is, is anyone besides Sean Dolan going to do anything about it?

Mary McGarr Katy ISD Board Member 1991-1996

Since the issue that started all of this controversy is about bullying, I’d like for all of us to get back to that matter. There’s plenty of evidence that Katy ISD is permissive when it comes to bullying, hoping with each incident that over time, a matter will simply go away and people will forget.

I think that’s not the case. I wrote this piece in March. I’ve asked that it be posted with no response, so I’m posting it myself:

The “Promise Plan”

In the last week, those of us who are paying attention made some startling connections regarding the treatment of our children and grandchildren in the public schools. Thankfully Rush Limbaugh, The WashingtonTimes, and Laura Ingraham at RealClearPolitics.com were on the story and put everything together for us. It seems odd that others are not jumping on all the connections and links that add up to a good explanation of why students like Nikolas Cruz (the Florida school killer) act out.

It seems that President Obama, he being a person who is in on the scheme to dumb down ALL of our children, devised plans during his administration to stoke the bias that he is so obviously capable of perpetrating.

While in office, President Obama, in an effort to help minority students (and mostly black students) become successful in life by getting in to college, the military and so on, devised several programs that overwhelmingly aided and abetted these students when such aid should never have happened. In order to let them frog leap over all the other students who had adequate grades, acceptable behavior, as well as all those other attributes that students need to succeed in life. He decided to initiate programs that circumvented such attributes by not allowing the permanent records of these students or any other students from ever being created at all. His rationale was that minority children are held back from achieving success in their lives by the existence of “permanent records” of their behavior in our public schools. Better that those records just disappear!

To hide what he was doing, he just tossed all the other students into the plot as well! Now none of our public school students appear to have a permanent record of their bad behavior!*

For a more comprehensive explanation of this story please click on these links and read for yourself how all of this matter came about:

It is always comfortable to think that while bad things happen elsewhere, they can’t possibly be happening at the school where one’s child goes every morning.

But that’s not the case. It is clear, that schools in Katy ISD have been moved from the bogus “Zero Tolerance” disciplinary plan which was the District’s first effort to protect its administrators from lawsuits, to the “Promise Plan” which also is designed to legally protect those same administrators.

And you thought schools were supposed to protect the students!

This “Promise Plan” scheme by President Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, is partisan and perhaps racist at its core. This scheme will NOT help the student who keeps up his grades, behaves well and otherwise uses the public schools to acquire an education. The racism enters in, not because records are erased, but because President Obama believes that minority children are somehow the ones who need help with records of bad behavior! I do not believe that such is true. Bad behavior crosses all lines of sex, IQ, economic level, and racial or ethnic background. In well run schools where rules are enforced, that have the proper curriculum, and where the principal and the teachers evince proper attitudes toward their students, there is no more or less minority bad behavior than there is among all the other students.

Public schools, for the last twenty-five years have hired attorneys to help them deal with increasing amounts of crime in our public schools. Administrators are obviously vulnerable to lawsuits if they violate the rights of students, so in order to keep that from happening, ways and means have been devised to protect those administrators– to the detriment of the students. These plans are designed to protect administrators from themselves, but certainly not to protect the students.

It has long been known that students do not have “due process” rights in our public schools and especially in the Katy ISD schools. How the schools were able to avoid and undermine those rights has not been so obvious, but in Texas, the Texas Education Agency, it appears, set up a plan to allow administrators to toss misbehaving (in their opinion) students into three day suspensions–either in or out of the school. Evidently a hole in the constitutionally based state law allowed them to evade the Due Process Clause with that maneuver and then to do whatever it was that they wanted to do with that student.

When the three days are over, administrators are allowed to charge a student with whatever it is they want to charge him with on that particular day. They then construct a mock jury of friendly EMPLOYEES OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT to hear the case, and the “evidence of the crime” is presented to that obviously biased committee. The committee then hears “evidence” that the school administrators have collected and makes a decision regarding the ultimate fate of the student.

Never mind that the evidence regarding the innocence of the student is not allowed to be presented!

Never mind that the process often appears to be concocted to be biased in favor of the administrator making the charges.

Never mind that the “evidence” that has been collected may or may not be factual.

Never mind that parents of the charged student are not allowed any say in the matter.

So how does all of this affect YOUR child in a Katy ISD school? As a parent, you will be surprised. Your child can cross the line of acceptable behavior at his school at any minute. In fact, students usually don’t even have to commit a “criminal” act; they can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Read on…

In Katy ISD in the early 2000’s, the stratagem of “Zero Tolerance” at first presented itself to unwary school boards as a plan to protect most of the students and help with bad behavior. School board members could not think of ways to question that plan, so they allowed it to proceed. After all, it sounded reasonable to think that students would be held to a high standard of conduct.

What those board members did not foresee or understand was the true intent of the issue. Holding students to a higher standard was not the plan; saving administrators from having to deal with misbehaving students and possible lawsuits, was.

“Zero Tolerance” meant that discipline was totally controlled by the whim of the administrator in charge. No facts, no legitimate charges, no way for parents to support the innocence of their children were allowed. Long time Katy ISD residents will recall the student who was accused of bringing a “knife” to school when it was actually only a small pencil sharpener blade! Or the student who carved initials into a bench that already had a gazillion carvings and who was nearly crucified in the media until a new superintendent arrived and dismissed all charges because he didn’t want to be bothered with the mess of the previous superintendent.

Or perhaps we should recall the student who found herself in a car with other students who were drinking, and while she was not, she was charged and found to be as guilty as the others–probably negatively affecting her life forever! [Just the charges are devastating in and of themselves!]

Public schools had been plodding along with the Zero Tolerance nonsense for years, and then along came President Obama. He, in an effort to “help students,” decided to institute the “Promise Plan.”

President Obama’s plan ended the Zero Tolerance effort about 2013. No bells and whistles were rung or tooted. No public discussion of the new plan was allowed. No warning that something huge was about to happen to the rights of all American students all over our country. The federal government (read President Obama) didn’t want the public to realize what was about to happen, and we didn’t!

Imagine if you will, the elation of public school administrators, when they realized, that under this Federal “Promise Plan,” they did not have to punish students for bad behavior at all! All they had to do was just toss the misbehaving students back to the poor beleaguered teachers to deal with however they could!

The plan stipulated that there would be no arrests made at the school, no punishment for drug possession, no warrants served on campus, no accessible records kept of any misbehavior at the time of the infraction or from year to year, and so on.

Of even more import is the fact that they took all discretion away from public law officers in the making of an arrest. How does a public law officer (not the school police) deal with a crime or a child who has perpetrated multiple crimes at his/her school if they cannot know of the particulars of the case because there is no cumulative record? The answer is, they don’t.

If one watched Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News recently, she pointed out that the schools no longer report “alcohol related incidents, assaults/threats of assaults, bullying, disruptions on campus, drug use, possession of drug paraphernalia, false accusations against school staff, fighting–“mutual combat”, (that means if someone punches YOUR kid, and YOUR kid punches back, he’s just as guilty as the perpetrator,) harassment, theft, trespassing, and vandalism/damage to school property.”

In Katy ISD, if parents are paying attention, they realize that bad behavior is swept under the rug in almost every instance. Principals and their minions have become quite adept at deflecting problems to the detriment of the collective behavior of all our students

I hope that everyone sees what has ocurred. It’s not the guns; it’s not the mental health, it’s not the parents, but more importantly it’s what is happening and NOT happening AT SCHOOL that is the problem!

Not only is the school responsible for the bad disciplinary problems, it should become clear that all of that matter goes hand in hand with the dumbing down of the curriculum which also allows the school district to not be held responsible for how students develop as academic students. The “dumbed down” curriculum is also the result of President Obama’s education policies.

When students, for example, aren’t taught to read, or write cursively, or spell; when they have no textbooks to take home so that parents can help them with homework, when they aren’t allowed to do a math problem without undergoing a “process” that leads them through multiple computations such as the classic “two plus two equals four but it might also equal five or six,” the students then have a terrible time with any high school math course at all and most of their other academic courses. When they don’t have an American history class from the beginning in their high school years and therefore have no clue what capitalism and socialism and communism are; when they spend their time flying kites for “world peace” and watching “Fern Gully” multiple times in elementary school; (and the list of questionable endeavors is endless), they do not receive a classical education as we all used to receive, and so they cannot get into that college where they wanted to go. They also have no intermediate knowledge or skills with which to get a job, and so they come back home to live with Mom and Dad.

That’s the story of the Broward County student and what underlies his reprehensible behavior. Place the blame squarely on the public schools that he attended and their failure to provide a proper education and clear rules of behavior. While you’re at it look around at the school your child attends. It’s identical to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland school district.

It has recently been reported that the Broward County school district was the first to implement President Obama’s Promise Plan.

*What we have learned recently in Katy ISD is that permanent behavior records do indeed exist, but they are hidden from parents and teachers and only available to upper level administrators who only use them when they must in order to protect themselves.